Solitary Watch is offering grants to journalists and nonprofit newsrooms working in all media with the goal of expanding public awareness and understanding of solitary confinement in U.S. federal and state prisons, local and tribal jails, immigration detention centers, and juvenile justice facilities. Complete grant guidelines and application instructions can be found below.

While it contains nearly two million people—a population larger than all but four U.S. cities—the American carceral system has been kept largely off-limits to the public and the press. Solitary confinement, which functions as a prison within a prison, has been even more difficult to access. Despite an increase in media attention to solitary confinement over the past decade, recent polling shows that most Americans still lack the knowledge needed to make informed choices about this widespread and controversial practice.

The Solitary Confinement Reporting Grants support stipends for both established and upcoming journalists working as freelancers or in small nonprofit newsrooms,  and cover reporting expenses such as travel, public records requests, and communications with incarcerated sources. The new program complements Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project, which has awarded dozens of reporting grants to incarcerated journalists. Together, these two grant opportunities will continue to get crucial stories out of the dark and in front of readers.

In addition to providing reporting grants, Solitary Watch recently launched a series of virtual roundtables—by journalists and for journalists—on covering prison conditions, to help reporters share tips and resources for covering this challenging beat. 

The first round of Solitary Confinement Reporting Grants was announced in September 2026.

• Chandra Bozelko will report on the impact of an innovative pilot program offering legal representation to people facing solitary confinement in New York.
• Renee Feltz will create a multi-media report on the enduring physical and mental impact of long-term solitary confinement on the writer and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
• Raina Lipsitz and Chris Gelardi (New York Focus) will investigate New York’s holding of incarcerated people in isolation in bathroomless cells called “defecation rooms.”
• Monique Maydan will explore the lingering effects of solitary confinement, through a profile of a man who spent decades in prison and ICE detention in Florida, including years in solitary. 
• Kate Morrissey (Daylight San Diego) will investigate the placement of people in solitary confinement for “medical isolation” at Otay Mesa ICE facility in California.
• Delaney Nolan (The Lens) will investigate a new immigration detention unit housed in a notorious shuttered solitary confinement building at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
• Sierra Pfeifer and Keaton Ross (KOSU & Oklahoma Watch) will produce a print and audio story on the solitary confinement of people with mental health disorders in Oklahoma.

Grant Guidelines:

Applications will be accepted three times a year, on March 31, July 31, and November 30. The next deadline in November 30, 2026.

Solitary Watch is looking for stories that have yet to be told about all aspects of solitary confinement, with a national, state, local, or thematic focus, in all media. Topics and approaches can include, but are not in any way limited to:

• Data-based stories and data visualizations that provide new insights on the use or impact of solitary.
• Work that draws on the lived experience of people in solitary confinement, solitary survivors, and their families and communities, as well as of staff working in solitary confinement units. 
• Stories that look at alternatives to solitary or at alternate solutions to the problems solitary purports to solve.
• Analyses of the political context or political fallout of the use of solitary, for example as an issue in local elections.
• Investigations of rural and suburban jails and immigration detention centers, which are run with even less oversight than prisons.

In addition to written work, we welcome short video and audio pieces, photography, and graphic narratives. We encourage proposals from journalists working in local areas where solitary has received little coverage. Grants are meant to cover both payments to journalists and reporting expenses, and will range from $1,000 to $3,000. 

Proposals may be submitted by individual reporters and teams, and also by small nonprofit newsrooms who may need additional support to undertake this subject. If the applicant is a newsroom, a reporter should still be designated for the grant project. 

Please note that these grants are intended for journalists working outside of prisons. Incarcerated journalists should apply to our separate grants program, the Ridgeway Reporting Project.

Application Instructions:

Applications for the current round of grants must be received no later than midnight on November 30, 2026 (earlier applications are welcomed, but will generally be held and reviewed along with others). Please send only the following materials as PDF attachments to grants@solitarywatch.org.

1. A proposal of no more than four pages total, in 12-pt. type with 1-inch margins. This should include:

• Name(s) of reporter(s)
• Email and phone number
• Whether you are a freelance reporter or attached to a newsroom
• Grant amount requested
• Medium and length of proposed project
• Up to 1,000 words describing your project and reporting plans
• Name of a secured outlet for publication, or names of three possible outlets to which you will pitch your project
• A list of any anticipated reporting expenses
• A professional biography of up to 300 words
• A list of the two work samples you are submitting (see below)

2. Two work samples. Links to samples of print and online written work, photography, and multimedia work should be included at the end of your proposal. (Please send no more than one longform piece.)

Grant recipients will be notified and announced in late January 2027. Funded projects must be completed within nine months, or funds should be returned.

For more information on the grants program or roundtables for journalists, email grants@solitarywatch.org.

Solitary Watch’s grant programs for journalists are made possible by support from the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation, the Navigation Fund, and the Vital Projects Fund.

To support this or any of our important work, please consider making a donation. To make an online donation, please go to solitarywatch.org/donate. To donate by check, please make your check payable to Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs and indicate “Solitary Watch” in the memo. Send to: SEE, 23564 Calabasas Road, Suite 201, Calabasas, CA 91302. All donations are fully tax-deductible. Thank you for your support.